Perceive It to Achieve It: Seize your mind and use the power of motivation to positively affect your wellness zones

By Michael Andrew Torigian MD

"Perceive It to Achieve It" is a profound self-help book designed to guide you on a transformative journey toward self-improvement and well-being. This insightful guide explores the concept of thought manifestation, emphasizing that your thoughts play a significant role in shaping your actions, life, and wellness.

This extraordinary self-help guide is not merely theoretical; it provides practical insights on how to break bad habits, particularly the ones that harm your mental well-being. With the tools and techniques imparted by Torigian, you'll learn to identify and shed the damaging habits that plague your mind and replace them with healthier ones.

The unique feature of this book is its focus on how to control your thoughts. It encourages you to take command of your mind and, subsequently, your life. With a more practical and personal approach than similar works by renowned authors like Anthony Robbins, Eckhart Tolle, and Dr. Wayne Dyer’s “Your Erroneous Zones,” this book is a treasure trove of wisdom that propels you towards positivity and well-being.

"Perceive It to Achieve It" is not just a read; it's an experience filled with quotes and affirmations, and numerous passages that reflect the author's thoughts and feelings. The aim is to inspire and motivate you to make positive changes in your life, reinvigorating self-direction, and rejuvenating lost desires.
Moreover, it's a helping hand for those who have lost their ability to self-identify their destructive habits. By becoming aware of your thought patterns and behaviors, you can commence the journey of change and growth.

The book introduces the concept of a wellness zone, a state of heightened well-being, health, and happiness that you can achieve by nurturing your motivation. Recognize that the source of your motivation might change with time, but finding things that invigorate you will help sustain your wellness zones and maintain your health.

"Perceive It to Achieve It" is not just a book; it's a self-help beacon lighting up your path towards self-discovery, self-improvement, and overall well-being.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: May 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781982268022

Michael Andrew Torigian MD

Michael Andrew Torigian, MD, is a family physician who has extensive experience in general medicine, sports medicine, and natural healing. He has studied how the physical self is greatly influenced by diet, quality of movement, and mental wellness. Torigian received training in acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine and integrates this unique background of traditional and non-traditional medicine to better address his patients’ needs.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

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If You Perceive It, You Will Achieve It

If at first you don’t perceive, try, try again.

—Michael Torigian

People choose the reality in which they live;

Our perception is our reality.

Some of us will perceive to live in a happy environment;

Others will perceive their environment to be spiteful or hostile.

Some will look at those with abundance with bitterness and spitefulness,

While others will view them with wonder and admiration.

Some will look at those who are deprived and disadvantaged with disdain and disgust,

While others will ponder with empathy and sorrow.

This latter group has gratitude, and they feel blessed for their own personal good fortune.

You choose what you see. You choose what you perceive.

CHAPTER 2

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Motivation

The ancestor to every action is a thought.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

You only get one chance to make a first impression. We have all heard that expression. It is often used to emphasize the importance of presenting ourselves maturely and appropriately when first meeting someone, or during an interview. But there is another first impression that is equally, if not far more important to keep in mind. We constantly make first impressions with our thoughts. As soon as you place a negative thought about someone or something in your mind, it is almost certainly there for life. Your mind will always try to confirm that first opinion, even if your original decision was based on incorrect information. I suggest you don’t let your mind form a negative first opinion. Don’t allow the seeds of a pernicious thought to germinate in your mind.

This raises questions. If negative first impressions can stay in our minds for a very long time, then is it possible for a positive thought to stay for a very long time, perhaps even forever? What if we avoid negative thoughts and concentrate only on positive thoughts? Could these positive thoughts play a role in improving our mental and physical health? Does thinking healthy help us avoid illness and death?

The bad news is that life has a 100 percent mortality rate. People wish to live healthy lives for as long as they can, and thinking healthy is a major part of achieving that goal. To think healthy, we need to stay motivated about both wellness and life.

Most people say that when you are depressed, your motivation is low. The medical field used to refer to this as psychomotor retardation. Depressed people don’t feel like doing anything. Most of us have experienced this feeling.

I believe it is the other way around. If you stop motivating yourself, you become depressed. There are many examples of parents who become depressed when their kids move out of the house, and they suddenly find themselves searching for things to do. Many retirees who cannot occupy their time constructively often fall into a mental slump due to a lack of motivating desires. There are many people who live life without motivation or purpose and have fought depression their entire lives.

Think about individuals who have suffered enormous losses in their life and yet somehow find a way to carry on. They are self-motivators. That doesn’t mean they don’t mourn their individual losses. It doesn’t mean that they don’t have low moods every now again. It’s simply that they have goals and a sense of purpose in their lives. I often reflect on a passage in Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning, wherein he states,

To be sure, man’s search for meaning may arouse inner tension rather than inner equilibrium. However, precisely such tension is an indispensable prerequisite of mental health. There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life. There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: "He who has a why to live for, can bear almost any how."

Contrast that to someone who has great difficulty motivating himself or herself in general. Any small bump in one’s life throws one into a long struggle—sometimes never really regaining that desire of life. People believe happiness will come to them from a new job, new friends, new partner, or even money. All of these things may be nice changes, but they should enhance one’s mood, not control it. People who are depressed and find themselves in a new relationship often discover that they revert back to their depressed selves shortly afterward. As the saying goes, Don’t go looking for happiness; take happiness wherever go.

Think happy! You must think happy. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, The ancestor to every action is a thought. That holds true for all the wonderful achievements in life: inventions, the advancement of science, business accomplishments, sporting success, and more. But why doesn’t it hold true for regular, everyday life? Well, of course it does. There are people who go around every day thinking negatively. Their thoughts are directed toward the unattainable, the unhappy, and the undesirable aspects of life. You know who they are. The ancestor to every action, be it a physical, emotional, or spiritual action, is a thought! If your thoughts are negative, your physical being, emotional being, and your spiritual being will follow. As I continually tell my children, Every dream achieved was preceded by a dream believed!

People will use past events in their lives as excuses for not being motivated or happy. They will use excuses such as having a bad teacher when they were younger, or their parents divorcing when they were young. Excuses such as having a bad role model or hanging out with the wrong crowd will be used to explain their poor choices of today. They will say things like You know, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and What did you expect? It is in my genes. The excuses are limitless. Let’s talk about three commonly used self-destructive excuses: past events, guilt, and blame.

1. Past Events

One should never restrict one’s future by reflecting on past events and falsely believing that one’s past guides one’s future. This unhealthy exercise of using past events to justify current actions can be explained with a wonderful metaphor. I first heard this metaphor at a lecture by the late Dr. Wayne Dyer, and I believe Dr. Dyer took this metaphor from Alan Watts. It goes something like this.

Your life is like a boat. Picture yourself standing on the back of the boat looking down into the water. The wake you see is a sign of where you have been, where the boat has traveled. The wake is the trail left behind—nothing more, and nothing less.

The boat as it moves forward through the water represents the present-day energy and present-day thoughts that you are generating. The thoughts you are having now, and how you use them, guides the boat.

The point here is that the wake does not drive the boat; it is simply a trail left behind and does not determine the boat’s direction. Only you and your thoughts will guide the boat and drive your future path.

Now imagine that the boat is your life, and the wake represents all the things that have happened in the past: what your body is like, what your parents were like, where you were in the birth order, how your mother treated you, whether your father was an alcoholic, and anything else. All of these things are nothing more than the wake of your boat.

Most people live with the illusion that their wakes are driving their lives—which is impossible. The wake is nothing more than a history of where you have been. It does not control the boat; nor does your past control you.

In order to nourish your soul, you must be able to get out of the wake. Never let what’s happened in the past drive your future.

2. Guilt

Some people use guilt as their means to staying down. They do this consciously or subconsciously. Feelings of guilt will always make you weaker and unhealthier. You must rid yourself of all guilt.

As Dr. Wayne Dyer would say, No amount of guilt can ever change history, and releasing guilt is like removing a huge weight from your shoulders. Guilt is released through the empowering thought of love and respect for yourself. Let go of standards of perfection and refuse to use up the precious currency of your life, the now, with thoughts that continue to frustrate and weaken you. Instead, vow to be better than you used to be, which is the true test of nobility. No amount of guilt can ever change anything. Feeling guilty about past events in your life will never change it. In some funny way, when people allow guilt to occupy their lives, they are attempting to gain sympathy, maybe even pity, for being involved in the past event. As Abraham Maslow stated, I can feel guilty about the past, apprehensive about the future, but only in the present can I act. The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.

3. Blame

Blame is also a neat little device that you can use whenever you don’t want to take responsibility for something in your life. If you are using blame in your life, you will undoubtedly prevent your own mental wellness and spiritual growth. You will impede all potential for improvement in your life. You will be trapped emotionally and physically until you learn to forgive. And forgiving yourself is essential for progression to ultimate well-being.

During one of my psychiatry rotations while I was a medical resident at Queen’s University, I would often hear the psychiatrist say to the patient, You can’t change what has happened to you in the past, but you can change the way you think about it. Put another way, What others say about me or do to me is their path. How I react is mine.

There is a proverb that says, As you think, so shall you be. Think positive. Think happy. Think of excitement. It is not the opposite: as you be, so shall you think. Don’t let circumstances around you direct your feelings and thoughts. By controlling your own thoughts, you will direct the circumstances upon which you develop.

Anything you desire to do, you can do. Quite simply, it is your own thoughts that will drive your boat and your own thoughts that will get you out of your stagnation.

What you think is how you will feel. This is so true for the world of health. I can’t tell you how many times I see patients with negative lives, surrounding themselves with negative thoughts and repeating the same mistakes, and all they can do is tell me what’s wrong. When I attempt to redirect the way they are thinking, they do not have the ability to listen to what I am saying. The way they think is negative, and how they act is negative. The way they think precedes the way they act. The way they think influences what they hear. The way they think governs their health.

I can’t tell you how important your thoughts are to your overall health and well-being. In fact, as you will see in the following chapters, thinking healthy can even influence how your genes express themselves.

Unfortunately, there exist individuals who have no desire to become healthy. They are not capable of hearing positive remarks. Instead, they wish to keep themselves down so that the expectations set upon them are low and they can attract sympathy. It is remarkable but unfortunately not unique. I have many patients like this. And unfortunately, their physical health follows right along with their poor mental attitude.

CHAPTER 3

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The Seven Fundamentals of Good Health and Wellness

Mental wellness isn’t just the absence

of depression, but the presence of

happiness and joyfulness.

—Michael Torigian

In Stride toward Freedom, Martin Luther King Jr. said, True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.¹

I would offer to you that mental wellness isn’t just the absence of depression; it is the presence of happiness and joyfulness.

When a physician or therapist encounters patients who are struggling with their thoughts and their moods, we often try to find what is depressing them and attempt to remove that thought process. If that depressing event is a past trauma that obviously cannot be altered, then we try to change the way they think about that event. But that is simply erasing the tension in their minds. We now need to place happiness and joyfulness in their thoughts. How does one achieve that state? To begin with, we must accept the fact that it is OK to help someone out of a hole, and it is OK to be that person’s friend and be a shoulder to cry on. That’s called empathy. But it is not productive to continually support erroneous actions. It is not OK to support that friend or patient’s depression for months on end. That’s called enabling, and you must not enable someone’s negativity.

How long are you going to listen to the same story over and over again? A good therapist, doctor, or even friend will not enable the negative reflections for too long. Listen and show you care, but at some point you must stop supporting their continued self-destructive thoughts and help them redirect their thoughts to a more positive and productive action. Likewise, if it is you who continually laments in the past, then you must make the necessary changes. You must motivate yourself to get out of the hole. In these circumstances and others like it, you must press forward to happiness and joyfulness. If others continue to fall into the same hole, you must no longer support that lift out of the hole but rather direct them down a different street. Also, they must own their actions. It was their choice to be there, and it was their mistake! They must own their actions. They fell in the hole, and blame lies solely with them. Even if someone did something hurtful to them, it was their choice to be there. They must accept it and move on. As therapists, doctors, and friends, we must help those who have fallen into a hole. But if they continually fall into the same hole, at some point they must help themselves out too. There is a wonderful poem by Portia Nelson (printed with permission).

I walk down the street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I fall in.

I am lost … I am helpless.

It isn’t my fault.

It takes forever to find a way out.

I